Search Starts Over for Voter-Friendly Primary

John Wildermuth, Chronicle Political Writer

Published
4:00 am PDT, Tuesday, June 27, 2000

It's back to square one for backers of California's landmark blanket primary law, which opened the way for all voters to participate in what Secretary of State Bill Jones said is often "the only election that counts." The Supreme Court's ruling yesterday that Proposition 198, which was voted in in 1996, was unconstitutional automatically returns the state to its decades-old closed primary system, where Republicans can vote for Republicans, Democrats for Democrats and independent and decline-to-state voters are left voiceless in choosing the candidates for office.

"The court is denying us choices and disenfranchising more than 2 million decline-to-state voters," Jones, a Republican, said after the ruling. "Going back to a closed system doesn't strike me as what California voters want to do going into a new century."

The state can't go back to the "bad old days" of the closed primary system, said Lynda Rice, executive director of Californians to Protect the Open Primary, the group that put Proposition 198 on the ballot.

"We're not going to give up," she said. "Exit polling after the presidential primary in March showed 83 percent support for the open primary."

The question now is what can be done in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling.

Rep. Tom Campbell, R-Campbell, one of the main backers of Proposition 198, said discussions already have started about putting a new voting initiative on the ballot, probably in 2002.

"I want to let people participate as freely as they did in 2000," said Campbell, who is running for U.S. Senate. "Some change is needed."

Neither Campbell nor other blanket primary supporters could say exactly what a new initiative would call for.

One possibility is an open primary, where any voter can decide on election day which primary he or she wants to participate in. That opens the voting up to everyone, but also limits voters to a single party's candidates.

Twenty states now have open primaries, but they have been almost as unpopular with the national party leaders as the blanket vote overturned by the court yesterday.

Those primaries also could be vulnerable to a court challenge, Justice Paul Stevens suggested in his dissent to the court majority.

"Given that open primaries are supported by essentially the same state interests that the Court disparages today . . . there is surely a danger that open primaries will fare no better against a First Amendment challenge than blanket primaries have," he wrote.

By concentrating on the effect the California primary had on political parties, Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion in the case, provided a road map for a possible replacement, Campbell said.

Louisiana now uses a nonpartisan version of the blanket primary, where the top two vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation, move into the runoff election. Since that system doesn't affect the parties, it would be legal in California, Campbell suggested.

Even state Democratic and Republican officials suggested that changes in California's election rules are possible. Art Torres, state Democratic Party chairman, said he favors a modified open primary that would allow independent voters, but not members of other parties, to vote in Democratic primaries.